The North West Shelf facility is one of Australia’s dirtiest and most polluting fossil fuel projects, with emitted methane 86 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide over the medium term.

4 June 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

THE approval of Woodside’s North West Shelf carbon bomb came as NSW was being lashed by ‘1 in 500 year’ floods, the most recent in a series of devastating climate fuelled disasters - each made worse by coal and gas.

 

it was during the NSW flood disaster that Labor approved the Woodside North West Shelf extension project even faster than the Liberals’ pre-election guarantee to rush it through. Dutton promised to approve the North West Shelf within 30 days of forming government - Albanese approved it in just 19 days. So much for ‘green credentials’, which must be a kick in the guts for all those voters that gave Labor an unprecedented victory - hubris and arrogance have caused a stumble in the ‘renewal energy walk’.

 

Despite Minister Murray Watt’s rhetoric, gas is as dirty as coal - with emitted methane 86 times worse for the climate than carbon dioxide over the medium term. The refusal of Woodside would have secured the Albanese government’s place in Australian history as a climate change warrior, but instead their faces have been left blackened with carbon.

 

Woodside was the new Labor government’s first big climate test, and, instead of ‘Walking the Walk’, Anthony Albanese lined all his dominoes up to fail spectacularly - approving Woodside’s carbon bomb even faster than Dutton planned to.

 

Even though Australia’s environment laws are broken, and there was a promise that they would be fixed, the rapid-speed by Murray Watt to approve the massive fossil fuel project, which will destroy the environment, clearly indicates that he has no intention of fixing them. The coal and gas industry must be rubbing their hands together with glee.

 

Environmental groups are aghast at Watt’s lighting decision, claiming that the Woodside approval has killed the prospect of achieving net zero by 2050.

 

They add the Minister must be wanting the title of Australia’s dodgiest Environment Minister, after rushing out the decision mere hours after a damning UNESCO report was released.

 

The report to UNESCO by its World Heritage advisory body warned that pollution from the North West Shelf threatened the Murujuga rock art, jeopardising its World Heritage nomination.

 

It found that Australia's existing environmental laws and regulations were inadequate to protect the ancient site, stating that dirty, polluting gas and the rock art couldn’t coexist.

 

During the last term of parliament, Labor approved more than 30 coal and gas projects, and it now seems they have no intention of slowing down.

 

One incensed environmentalist, whom the Grapevine spoke to, said that Labor’s light on the hill has become a gas flare. “Watt has chosen environmental destruction over its protection,” they said.

 

“Watt’s decision primes a massive “carbon bomb” of future emissions, which some credible estimates put at 10 times Australia’s annual emissions.

 

“Watt approved this project without reference to future carbon emissions because of the big lie at the heart of Australia’s climate policies: the convenient fiction that coal and gas burnt in other countries somehow doesn’t count towards Australia’s emission reduction targets."

 

What the environmentalist said is technically correct, in terms of the black letter of the Paris climate treaty and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. There is no climate trigger in the EPBC Act; Labor had a chance to amend the law in the last parliament, but Albanese intervened to block environmental reforms.

 

“It would seem that Albanese’s green credentials are as black as the carbon that Woodside’s project will produce," the environmentalist said.

 

Green Senator Larissa Waters said that in approving Woodside’s extension project, the re-elected government and the new environment minister had failed their first climate test.

 

“This North West Shelf extension has been Labor’s single most important coal and gas decision to date. It will release more pollution each year than all of Australia’s coal stations combined and run for 45 more years," Senator Waters said.

 

“Sacrificing the oldest art gallery on the planet for Woodside’s private profits while the Hunter has just experienced a 1 in 500 year flood event shows the climate madness this decision is.

 

“Approving fossil fuels out to 2070 totally undermines the government’s commitment to net zero by 2050, which is already too late for a safe climate future.

 

“Minister Watt approved the extension with ‘strict conditions’, but with Woodside already under investigation for an oil spill off the WA coast, we have little confidence those conditions will be complied with.

 

“This is just the first step of Woodside’s Burrup Hub expansion. Next they will want to frack the Kimberley and sink the nesting grounds of turtles at Scott Reef. The Greens will fight to stop those gas basins being opened up with every fibre of our being.

 

“We will be encouraging environment groups to take legal action against this approval, and we support Raelene Cooper in her cultural heritage litigation.

 

“This approval will mean supercharged floods, fires and species extinctions.”

 

Carbon emissions remain high

 

On the same week that Labor approved the Woodside extension to mine gas on the North West Shelf, carbon emissions were higher under and Albanese government than the previous Morrison government.

 

The latest quarterly emissions update has revealed emissions are still going up and remain high as Labor continues to  back coal and gas.

 

The data reveals emissions have risen year on year from 446.2 to 446.4 million tonnes.

 

The update also shows that emissions were higher in the year to December 2024 (446.4 Mt) than they were in the year to June 2022 when the Morrison Government left office (440.6 Mt).

 

These damning figures follow Labor’s decision to approve the climate-wrecking North West Shelf dirty gas extension to 2070, effectively killing the prospect of achieving net zero by 2050.

 

Labor approved more than 30 new coal and gas projects in its previous term of office, despite claiming they cared for the environment and were moving forward, all stops out, to deal with the climate crisis. Yet the quarterly emissions update continues to tell a different story, with no signs of the Albanese government to rapidly start cutting carbon emissions.

 

An act of tactical fatalism that will burn us all

 

Labor's approval of Woodside's North West Shelf extension has sealed the deal for the climate movement to even consider there was a global moral pact of good intentions to protect the environment -  those intentions are dead!

 

So, why did the Albanese government approve the Woodside extension and are they climate deniers? The Labor government is quick to point out that they are not climate deniers, which leaves the reason for approving Woodside's extension as something far scarier, and far worse.

 

Working to worsen fossil fuel reliance in 2025 in full acceptance of the consequences, but without any willingness to work to prevent them, can only be seen as “tactical fatalism”: the intentional, weaponised insistence that a worse future is the only future (from those who benefit the most from whatever makes it bad). And Murray Watt's approval of the gargantuan North West Shelf fossil gas processing facility is an absolute betrayal of what the Albanese government sold to voters.

 

It's a betrayal that will lead Australians into a bowl of lies; little strands of spaghetti about gas consumption, which, while burning the local consumers with ever-rising costs that will do nothing to address the cost of living, will certainly see obscene profits for the gas producers.

 

But Albanese's betrayal has become a plethora of lies as he scrambles to rationalise the project’s approval was important for domestic gas power generation than protecting the environment.

 

And let's not forget the Chris Bowen rhetoric: falsely claiming the site’s massive domestic emissions are being controlled by the “Safeguard Mechanism”, when Woodside already meets its targets entirely by buying up cheap, highly suspicious carbon offsets.

 

The Federal Labor government is trapping itself in a fossil fuel fatalism future!

 

An act of environmental bastardry

 

It has been reported that two Pacific island nations have already fired up at Australia over the Woodside project, one of the first major calls of the newly-elected Albanese government.

 

Tuvalu, a nation in the Pacific with a population of just shy of 10,000, warned against approving the Woodside project — saying its survival is at stake.

 

Its Climate Minister Maina Talia said the North West Shelf extension “would lock in emissions until 2070, threatening our survival” and undermine Australia’s chances at hosting the next global climate conference in 2026 in partnership with Pacific nations.

 

Meanwhile Vanuatu’s climate minister said he is devastated by the Australian government’s decision.

 

Vanuatu’s Minister for Climate Change Ralph Regenvanu said that the extension of the project is “a slap in the face for Pacific Island countries who have repeatedly called on Australia to stop approving new fossil fuel projects”.

 

He continued to say that the approval “severely undermines our national security and sabotages our future. The single greatest thing the Australian Labor government could do to protect our region is to stop opening new coal and gas projects”.

 

But it’s not only Australia’s Pacific neighbours that are concerned about the North West Shelf extension, The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has called it a “bitterly disappointing decision that locks in decades more climate pollution and will drive demand to open new gas fields”.

 

“That the gas is destined for export makes no difference to its climate impact,” ACF chief executive Kelly O’Shanassy said.

 

“It will be felt by Australians through more intense and frequent extreme weather events like bushfires, heatwaves, floods and coral deaths. Woodside sought this extension so it can drill gas from the proposed Browse gas field at Scott Reef, further fuelling global heating.”

 

Environmental groups have also raised concerns about the potential impact on Scott Reef, which is home to threatened species such as pygmy blue whales and green sea turtles.

 

“The North West Shelf facility is one of Australia’s dirtiest and most polluting fossil fuel projects,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific chief executive David Ritter said.

 

“This approval brings Woodside’s toxic gas plans closer to Scott Reef, holds back the clean energy transition underway in WA, and fuels growing climate damage in Australia and around the world.”

 

The Climate Council said the project marked the Albanese government’s 27th coal, oil or gas approval since taking office.

 

“Peter Dutton promised to approve this project before the last election. Voters rejected Dutton,” Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie said.

 

“Why would the Albanese Government take Dutton’s lead on climate policy? Approving the North West Shelf extension leaves a polluting stain on Labor’s climate legacy. Australians voted for a renewable-powered future, not more climate pollution and destruction.”

 

The Prime Minister’s spin [of] ‘accelerating global heating with another 45 years of gas as necessary for ‘firming’ in the energy transition’, makes him no better than every other climate denier and fossil fuel appeaser.

 

So, the North West Shelf extensions comes down to a simple political truth: Aussies who voted for a renewable future can forget the Albanese mantra, ‘friend of Pacific’, and forget the fact that Chris Bowen stood in front of wind farms or electric vehicles - it was all just duplicitous green-washing as the Woodside gas carbon bomb was detonated.

 

Rod Campbell, research director of the Australia Institute, whom many Coasties will remember speaking out, on behalf on the community, against the Wallarah 2 coal project at various Planning and Assessment Commission hearings, said: “Voters who put their faith in Labor to do the right thing for the climate must be feeling bitterly disappointed.”

 

“This expansion will do vast damage and deliver almost no benefit to Australia or Australians. For a government re-elected to take meaningful action on climate change, expanding the nation’s biggest fossil fuel project for another 45 years is a dreadful way to kick off its second term,” he said.

 

The Albanese government has opted, once again, to put big gas ahead of Australians, which begs the question: why, after selling the electorate on their green credentials, would the Albanese government, at a time of historic climate breakdown, approve one of the nation’s biggest and dirtiest fossil fuel projects – extending it for another forty-five years? What is it that the Albanese government doesn’t understand about the climate crisis?

 

The Woodside approval will mean more intense and frequent extreme weather events like bushfires, heatwaves, supercharged floods, and species extinctions. And it beggars belief that right after being exposed for spilling 16,000 litres of toxic oil into our oceans, the Government has rewarded Woodside with a green light to continue unleashing pollution for decades to come at North West Shelf.

 

For a government re-elected to take meaningful action on climate change, the Albanese government should hang their heads in shame for approving a project that will do enormous damage and add exponentially to the climate crisis.

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